by Andre Norton
The light by which all this could be viewed caused me the greatest amazement. From a center pole stretched two cords running from one side of the tent to the other. Along these were draped strips of filmy stuff which was like the finest of the silken strips Sulcar raiders sometimes brought from overseas. Entangled in this netting of gauze were myriads of small insects, not dead as one might see them in a spider’s larder, but alive, crawling about. And each insect was a glowing spark of light, so that the numbers together gave to the tent a luminance, dimmer, yes, than that familiar to me, but enough to see by.
I was staring at these in surprise, which betrayed me when the stranger came in and caught me open-eyed and plainly aware. Angry at my own foolishness, I tried to play my chosen role, assuming an expression I hoped he would read as fear, wriggling back on the bedding as one who would flee but could not.
He knelt by the side of the bed and stared down at me critically, appraisingly. Then he suddenly thrust his hand inside my jacket with brutal force, in a manner I could not mistake. Now I did not have to play at fear; I knew it, and what he would do, as well as if I could still read minds clearly.
I could no longer hold to my role of cowed female. It was not in me to allow without a struggle what he would do. I bent my head vainly, trying to snap my teeth into the hand which was now joined by his other, ripping loose my jacket and the tunic beneath. And I brought my knees up, not only to ward him off, in an effort but to battle as best I could.
It would seem that this was a game he had played before and he took delight in it. He sat back on his heels and there was such a grin on his face as promised evil of another kind than I had known. Perhaps drawing out and prolonging my degradation was also pleasing to him, for he did not proceed as I thought he would. Instead he sat watching me as if he would think out each step of what he would do, savoring it in fantasy before taking action.
But he was never to have his chance. There was a sharp call and the head and shoulders of another appeared under the, tent flap, letting me view my first tribeswoman.
She had the same broad features as my captor, but her hair was coiled and pinned into an elaborate tower on her head, the pins being gem-set so that they glinted in the light. Her fur coat was not tightly belted, but swung loose to show that under it, in spite of the chill of the weather, she wore nothing above the waist but a series of necklaces and collars of jeweled work. Her breasts were heavy and the nipples were painted yellow with petals radiating from them as if to stimulate flowers.
While she spoke to my captor she stared at me with a kind of contemptuous amusement, and her air was one of authority such as would set on a minor rank Wise Woman. Somehow, I had not expected to find this among these people, though why I had deemed it a male-dominated society I did not know, except for the way the stranger had served me.
Their words were oddly accented and they spoke very fast. I thought that here and there I caught a part of speech I did dimly recognize, yet I could make no sense of it at all. Again I yearned for my lost power, even a small measure of it. Only one who has held such and lost it can understand what I felt then, as if a goodly half of me had been emptied, to my great and growing loss.
Although I could not understand their words, it was plain that they speedily grew to be ones of anger, and that the woman was ordering my captor to do something he was loath to do. Once she half turned to the door behind her and made a gesture which I read as suggesting that she call upon someone else to back her commands.
The leering grin had long since vanished from his fat-lipped mouth. There was such a sullen glowering there now as I might have feared to see had I been the woman. But her contempt and impatience only grew the stronger and she swung again as if to call that help she had indicated stood outside. Before she could do so, if that was her intent, she was interrupted by a low, brazen booming which rang in one’s ears as if the air reechoed it.
And, hearing that, I for a short instant of time forgot where I lay and what ordeals might yet be before me. For that sonorous sound awoke in me something I thought I had lost forever—not only a bit of memory but instantaneous response which was for me so startling I wondered that I did not cry out as one suffering a sore wound.
Though my Power had seemingly been rift from me, memory had not. I could call to mind the skills, spells, domination of will and thought which had been taught me, even if I could not put them to use. And memory told me that what had sounded through this barbaric camp was a spirit gong. Who might use that tool of sorcery in such a place I could not guess.
The woman’s triumph was plainly visible, my captor’s scowl uneasy. He drew from his wide belt a long bladed knife, stooped over me to saw through those twisted cords which held my ankles tightly together. When I was free he hoisted me to my feet, his hands moving viciously over my body in a way which promised ill for the future if he could not have his way now.
Placed on my two feet by his strength as if I had no will of my own, he gave me a push forward which would have sent me helplessly on into the wall had not the woman, with muscles to match his, not caught me by the shoulder.
Her nails dug in in a grip which was cruel. Holding me, she propelled me out of the tent into a night which was alight with fires. Those about the flames did not look up as we passed, and I had the feeling they were deliberately avoiding sighting either of us for some reason. There still hung a trembling in the air, a vibration born of the gong, which had not died with the sound.
I stumbled along, both upheld and forced forward by the woman, past the fires, other tents, deeper into the woods, by a winding way which the trees gave us. With the fires well behind us now it seemed very dark and our path completely hidden. But my guard—guide—never faltered, walking confidently as if she could either see better in the dark than I, or had come this way so many times that her feet knew it by heart.
Then there was the wink of another fire, low, with flames which burned blue instead of crimson. And from it rose an aromatic smoke. That, too, I knew of old, though then it had spiralled from braziers and not from sticks set in the open. Had I been brought to a true Wise Woman, perhaps some exile out of Estcarp come over-mountain even as we in search of the ancient homeland?
The fire burned before another tent and this was larger, almost filling the small glade wherein it had been pitched. A cloaked and hooded figure did sentry duty at its door, stretching forth a hand now and then to toss into the flames herbs which burned sweetly. Sniffing those, knowing them well for what they were, I was heartened by this much: this was no power from the Shadow. What was fed, or could be summoned to such feeding, was not of the dark but the light.
Magic stands in two houses. The witch is one born to her craft, and her power is of the earth, of growing things and what is of nature. If she makes a pact with the Shadow then she turns to those things of evil which abide on earth—there are growing things to harm as well as heal.
The sorceress may be a born witch who strives to climb higher in her craft, or she may be one without the gift who painfully learns to use the Power. And again she chooses between light and dark.
Our Wise Women of Estcarp were born to their craft and I had been one of them, though I had not vowed their vows, nor taken on my breast the jewel as one of their sisterhood. Perhaps I could once have been deemed sorceress, since my learning went far beyond the simple witchcraft I could have wrought without struggle and preparation.
Which did I front now, I wondered as my guide bore me on toward the tent doorway? Was this a witch, or a learned sorceress? And I thought perhaps I should be prepared for the latter, judging by the evidence of that gong.
While the tent in which my captor had put me had been wanly lit by his entrapped insects, this was brighter. There were the strips of gauze with their prisoned, crawling things, but there also was, on a low table meant for one who knelt or sat crosslegged rather than in a chair, a ball of glimmering crystal. I was impelled to enter and that light which seemed to swirl fluidly within th
e container flared to sun brightness.
“Welcome, daughter.” The accent was archaic by Estcarpian standards, but the words were not the gabble I had heard used elsewhere in this camp. I went to my knees before the globe, not compelled by my guide, but the better to see who spoke.
The Old Race do not show signs of age, though their span of years is long, until they are close to the end. And I had seen few—one or two among the Wise Women—who ever showed it so plainly. I thought that she who huddled, bent and withered, beyond the table of the crystal must indeed be very close to death.
Her hair was white and scanty, and there had been no attempt to twist and pin it into the style favored by the tribeswoman. Instead it was netted close to her skull, and that I knew, too, for it was common to the Wise Women. But she was not lengthily robed as was their fashion. Around her shoulders was the bulk of a fur coat and that hung open showing a necklace with a single large jewel as a pendant lying on her bared body where her ancient breasts were now unsightly flaps of leathery skin. Her face was not the broad, thick-lipped one of the tribe, but was narrow, with the cleanly cut features I had seen all my life, though very deeply wrinkled, the eyes far sunken in the head.
“Welcome, daughter,” she repeated (or did the words just continue to ring in my head?). She reached forth her hands, but when I would have completed that old, old greeting and put mine palm to palm with hers I could not for the bindings on me. She turned to my guard, spitting words which made that woman cringe hastily down beside me, slitting at the cords with a knife.
My hands rose clumsily, the returning circulation prickling in their numbness, but I touched her skin, which was hot and dry against my own. For a moment we sat so, and I tried not to flinch from the mind which probed mine, learned my memories, my past as if all had been clearly written on an oft read roll.
“So that is the way of it!” She spoke in my head and for so little I was cheered, that I had received her thought so clearly, as I had not been able to do, even with Kyllan and Kemoc.
“It need not remain so for you,” she was continuing. “I felt your presence, my daughter, when you were still afar. I put into Sokfor’s mind, not openly, but as if he had thought it for himself, to go seeking you—”
“But my brothers—” I broke upon her sharply. With her power could she tell me now the truth? Did they still live?
“They are males, what matters it concerning them?” she returned with an arrogance I knew of old. “If you would know read the crystal.” She dropped my hands abruptly to indicate the glowing globe between us.
“I have no longer the power,” I told her. But that she must already know.
“Sleep is not death,” she answered my thought obliquely. “And that which sleeps can be awakened.”
Thus did she echo that faint hope I had held when I had started for Estcarp. I had not only feared that my emptiness might be filled by some evil, but I wanted, I needed, to regain at least a small part of what had been so rift from me.
“You can do this?” I demanded of her, not truly believing she would say yes, or that it could be so.
I sensed in her amusement, pride, and some other emotion so far hidden and so fleeting that I could not read it. But of them all pride was the greatest and it was out of that she answered me now.
“I do not know. There is time, but it is fast being counted bead by bead between the fingers.” Her left hand moved to her waist and she dangled into my sight one of those circlets of beads which, each strung some distance from the other, are smooth and cool and somehow soothing to the touch. Wise Women use them to govern the emotions, or for some private form of memory control. “I am old, daughter, and the hours are told for me swiftly. But what I have is yours.”
And so overjoyed was I by this offer of help, never thinking then that I might be enspelled by her power, or that no bargain benefits but one alone, that I relaxed, and could have wept with joy and relief, for she promised me what I wanted most. Perhaps some of Dinzil’s taint remained within me, that I was too easily won to what I desired, and had not the caution I should have held to.
Thus I met Utta and became one of her household, her pupil and “daughter.” It was a household, or tenthold of women such as was fit for a Wise Woman. I do not know Utta’s history, save that, of course, that was not her true name. An adept gives that to no one, since knowing the true name gives one power over its owner. Nor did I ever learn how she came to be one with this band of roving hunters, only that she had been with them for generations of their own shorter lives. She was a legend and goddess among them.
From time to time she had chosen “daughters” to serve her, but in this tribe there was no inborn gift to foster and she had never succeeded in finding another to share her duties even in the smallest part, or one who could comprehend her need for companionship. And she was very lonely.
I told her my tale, not aloud, but as she read my thoughts. She was not interested in the struggle for Escore, light against dark; long, long ago she had narrowed her world to this one small tribe and now she could not nor would not break the boundaries she had so set. I accepted that when I found she might help me regain what I had lost. And I think that the challenge I represented gave her a new reason to hold to life. She clung to that fiercely as she set about trying to make of me again at least a ghostly copy of what I once had been.
IV
The Vupsall, for so these rovers named themselves, had only vague legends for their history. Nothing that I overheard while dwelling among them suggested that they had once had fixed abodes, even when Escore was an untroubled land. They had an instinct for trade and Utta, in answer to my questions, suggested that they may have been wandering traders as well as herdsmen or something of the sort, before they turned to the more barbaric life of hunters.
Their normal range was not this far to the west. They had come here this time because of the raids of a stronger people who had broken up their larger bands, reducing most to fleeing clans. And I also learned from Utta and her handmaids that to the east, many days’ travel by tribal standards, there was another sea, or leastwise a very large body of water from which these enemies had come. As the Sulcar of the west, they made their homes on ships.
I tried to get more exact information, a drawing of a map. Whether they were honestly ignorant of such records, or whether they were, out of some inborn caution, deliberately vague, I never knew, but all I learned was hazy as to details.
They were restless and unhappy here in the west, and they could not settle down, but wandered almost aimlessly among the foothills of the mountains, camping no longer in any one place than the number of days to be told on the fingers of both hands, for so primitive were they in some things that was how they reckoned.
On the other hand they were wonder-workers with metal and their jewels and weapons were equal to the finest I had seen in Estcarp, save the designs were more barbaric.
A smith was held in high esteem among them, taking on the role of priest among such tribes as had not an Utta. And I gathered that few were provided with a seeress.
While Utta might rule their imaginations and fears, she was not the chieftainess. They had a chief, one Ifeng, a man in early middle years who possessed all the virtues they deemed necessary for leadership. He was courageous, yet not to the point of recklessness; he had a sense for trail seeking, and the ability to think clearly. He was also thoughtlessly cruel, and, I guessed, envious of Utta, though not to the point of daring to challenge her authority.
It had been his sister’s eldest son who had found me via his hound’s aid. And early the morning after Utta had appropriated me to her service, he came to her tent together with my late captor to urge the latter’s rights, by long custom, over my person.
His nephew stood a little behind, well content to let the chief argue in his favor, even as I sat cross-legged the length of a sword behind my new mistress, the dispute being left to our elders. He watched me greedily and I thanked what Powers beyond Powers that
there are walking the far winds of the world that Utta was here for my shield.
Ifeng stated his case, which by custom was clear and could not be gainsaid. I could not follow his speech, but I knew well the purport of it from the frequent glances in my direction; the gestures at me and in the direction of the mountains.
Utta heard him out and then with a single sharp-voiced sentence broke his arguments to bits. Her thought at the same time rang in my mind:
“Girl use your power. Look upon yonder cup, raise it up and bear it to Ifeng by your will.”
A feat easy to do in the old days but beyond me now. But such was the strength of her order that I obediently raised my hand and pointed to one of the cups wrought of silver, focusing my will on the task she demanded of me.
I shall always think that it was her will working through me which brought results. But the cup did rise and travel through the air, to come to rest at Ifeng’s right hand. He gave an exclamation and his fingers jerked from proximity to it, as if it were molten hot.
Then he swung to his nephew and his voice arose in what could only be berating before he turned again to Utta, touched his hand to his forehead in salute, and went from us, urging the younger man before him.
“I did not do that,” I slowly said when they were safe gone.
“Be still!” Her order rang in my head. “You shall do far more if they will be patient. Or wish you to lie under Sokfor’s body for his pleasure?” She smiled, and all the thousand wrinkles of her face creased as she read my instant reaction of disgust and horror. “It is well. I have served the tribe for long, and neither Ifeng, nor Sokfor, nor anyone else will rise to cross me. But remember this, girl, and get you to our work together, I alone am your buttress against that bedservice until you relearn such skills as shall protect you on your own.”